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A thought from the road
Throughout On the Road Kerouac "distinguishes between authentic work and the things people do so they can buy more stuff." So, writes John Leland.
Sal Paradise, not only rejects upward mobility, but is intent on being downwardly mobile. For Sal, as for Kerouac, "upward mobility [is] a plot to make men do pointless things, turning them into parodies of the American Dream."
When we consider the great technological advances that have increased productivity exponentially over the past two decades, we have to consider the good with the bad. Despite our ability to be more productive, I don't know many people who work less, but I know many who work more. Besides that contradiction, as Peter Hitchens recently wrote about, these technologies certainly have a dehumanizing effect. He observed in his post Human Beings Check Out, "The thing about the attempt to automate supermarket checkouts is that it depends on us - just as internet and telephone banking, with all their problems, could not have been introduced without our willing co-operation." Just a thought as the economy still lags and nationwide unemployment persists at around 10%.
It seems an ideal time to rethink a lot of things, especially one's personal practices. In short, the reality is we need to focus less on buying stuff. After all, it was rampant consumerism, financed by consumer debt (borrowing 110% of your equity in your home to go on a cruise, buy a jet-ski, or pay down credit card debt), that got us into this mess. Prior to the meltdown, this kind of consumer spending constituted somewhere around 75% of our GDP, creating an unsustainable situtation. Hence, repeating the fundamental economic failures of the past it is not going to get us out of our current slump, let alone put on us on solid ground.
Downward mobility of a kind is just what advanced countries, who consume resources at an unprecedented pace need, as three successive popes (not including Papa Luciani) have taught. Like the other two evangelical counsels, chastity and obedience, poverty applies to Christians in every state of life. As Don Giussani taught, poverty does not mean starving on a street corner in rags, which is destitution. Rather, poverty has to do with your relationship to things; with the question, In what, or in whom, do I place my hope?, which is nothing less than how you go about achieving your deepest desire, which is to be truly happy. As such, it calls for a certain detachment.
Anyway, Leland warns in the subtitle of his book that the lessons of On the Road are not what you think. This post brings July to a close. Next month marks the 5th anniversary of the clunky and uncertain beginning of what was then known as Scott Dodge for Nobody.
Sal Paradise, not only rejects upward mobility, but is intent on being downwardly mobile. For Sal, as for Kerouac, "upward mobility [is] a plot to make men do pointless things, turning them into parodies of the American Dream."
When we consider the great technological advances that have increased productivity exponentially over the past two decades, we have to consider the good with the bad. Despite our ability to be more productive, I don't know many people who work less, but I know many who work more. Besides that contradiction, as Peter Hitchens recently wrote about, these technologies certainly have a dehumanizing effect. He observed in his post Human Beings Check Out, "The thing about the attempt to automate supermarket checkouts is that it depends on us - just as internet and telephone banking, with all their problems, could not have been introduced without our willing co-operation." Just a thought as the economy still lags and nationwide unemployment persists at around 10%.
It seems an ideal time to rethink a lot of things, especially one's personal practices. In short, the reality is we need to focus less on buying stuff. After all, it was rampant consumerism, financed by consumer debt (borrowing 110% of your equity in your home to go on a cruise, buy a jet-ski, or pay down credit card debt), that got us into this mess. Prior to the meltdown, this kind of consumer spending constituted somewhere around 75% of our GDP, creating an unsustainable situtation. Hence, repeating the fundamental economic failures of the past it is not going to get us out of our current slump, let alone put on us on solid ground.
Downward mobility of a kind is just what advanced countries, who consume resources at an unprecedented pace need, as three successive popes (not including Papa Luciani) have taught. Like the other two evangelical counsels, chastity and obedience, poverty applies to Christians in every state of life. As Don Giussani taught, poverty does not mean starving on a street corner in rags, which is destitution. Rather, poverty has to do with your relationship to things; with the question, In what, or in whom, do I place my hope?, which is nothing less than how you go about achieving your deepest desire, which is to be truly happy. As such, it calls for a certain detachment.
Anyway, Leland warns in the subtitle of his book that the lessons of On the Road are not what you think. This post brings July to a close. Next month marks the 5th anniversary of the clunky and uncertain beginning of what was then known as Scott Dodge for Nobody.
"Hangin' out by the state line, turning holy water into wine"
Our 1980s summer continues this week. We've been working through what are, at least for me, inevitable '80s artists, like the Go-Gos, Phil Collins, Eddie Money, et. al. Today's Friday traditio is Billy Idol's Eyes Without a Face: Les yeux sans visage from 1983's Rebel Yell album. "You hear the music, you make a dip into someone else's pocket, then make a slip..."
Judge Bolton’s ruling on Arizona’s Immigration Law SB 1070
Of course by now you have all heard about U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton’s rulings on Arizona’s Immigration Law SB 1070. I see this ruling as a major blow to state’s ability to police their borders.
Bolton’s worse decision was saying that Arizona’s police cannot check on immigration status after a person is arrested for something else.
The Court first addresses the second sentence of Section 2(B): “Any person who is arrested shall have the person’s immigration status determined before the person is released.”
Arizona advances that the proper interpretation of this sentence is “that only where a reasonable suspicion exists that a person arrested is an alien and is unlawfully present in the United States must the person’s immigration status be determined before the person is released.” (Defs.’ Resp. to Pl.’s Mot. (“Defs.’ Resp.”) at 10.) Arizona goes on to state, “[T]he Arizona Legislature could not have intended to compel Arizona’s law enforcement officers to determine and verify the immigration status of every single person arrested – even for United States citizens and when there is absolutely no reason to believe the person is unlawfully present in the country.” (Id.)
The Court cannot interpret this provision as Arizona suggests. Before the passage of H.B. 2162, the first sentence of Section 2(B) of the original S.B. 1070 began, “For any lawful contact” rather than “For any lawful stop, detention or arrest.” (Compare original S.B. 1070 § 2(B) with H.B. 2162 § 3(B).) The second sentence w s identical in the original version and as modified by H.B. 2162. It is not a logical interpretation of the Arizona Legislature’s intent to state that it originally intended the first two sentences of Section 2(B) to be read as Section 2(B) are clearly independent of one another. Therefore, it does not follow logically that by changing “any lawful contact” to “any lawful stop, detention or arrest” in the first sentence, the Arizona Legislature intended to alter the meaning of the second sentence in any way. If that had been the Legislature’s intent, it could easily have modified the second sentence accordingly."
I just don’t see how Bolton makes this argument, when states already check people for a variety of other reasons after they are arrested (e.g. outstanding warrants, outstanding taxes and fines, etc). What makes immigration status so special that it should not be checked?
Judge Bolton’s concern about 4th Amendment issues also makes little sense to me.
Requiring Arizona law enforcement officials and agencies to determine the immigration status of every person who is arrested burdens lawfully-present aliens because their liberty will be restricted while their status is checked. Given the large number of people who are technically “arrested” but never booked into jail or perhaps even transported to a law enforcement facility, detention time for this category of arrestee will certainly be extended during an immigration status verification.
Legal Definition of Permanent Resident Card: United States permanent residents have an identification card known as the “Permanent Resident Card.” The Permanent Resident Card is also known as are the immigrant visa, permanent visa, Green Card, permanent resident visa, and form I-551 or form I-551. While permanent residents are not United States citizens, they are granted permission to reside and work in the United States on a permanent basis. Before the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, the requirement to carry the Permanent Resident Card at all times was not strictly enforced. Previously, permanent resident cards were usually only checked when traveling outside the United States. However, now the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) requires that permanent residents of the United States be prepared to show their Permanent Resident Card at all times. DHS also requires that all permanent residents of the United States who are traveling to show their Permanent Resident Card or other documentation that will prove their legal status in the country.
So where is this burden to lawfully-present aliens that Bolton speaks of? Is she suggesting that even the Feds drop this requirement? Bolton’s rulings will no doubt be challenged and we will see this case wind its way up to the Supreme Court.
Who’s ya daddy? Obama bows to Gov. Chris Christie
Here is an Obama Bow that I too agree with. Perhaps Obama was merely acknowledging Chris Christie’s superior Chief Executive skills. Chris Christie is not one to let politics stand in the way of doing the right thing for the people. He knows how to fight the special interest by giving them a taste of their own medicine.
Christie: […]The state teachers union said--they had a rally in Trenton against me. 35,000 people came from the teachers. You know what that rally was? The "me first" rally. "Pay me my raise first. Pay me my free health benefits first. Pay me my pension first. And everybody else in New Jersey, get to the back of the line." Well, you know what? I'm not going to sit by and allow that to go unnoticed, so we'll shine a bright light on it, and we'll see how the people react. But I think we are seeing how the people of New Jersey are reacting, and that's how you make it politically palatable in other states in the country. Just shine a bright light on greed and self-interest."
Sister Toldjah sees the rise of a new breed of Strong Republican Governors. I see a rise of a new breed of Strong Republicans period. There are some new Republicans out there who (to borrow a phrase from my friend Sam at The Last Tradition) “piss standing up”. They are less concerned about political expediency and more concerned about doing the right thing for the people. In doing so, they are willing to withstand the hot blast of hatred from their political foes. Some obvious examples would be Palin, Bachmann, Brewer, Christie and West. I sure you can think of others.
If we want to reclaim our republic, we are going to need more strong politicians like these guys. We will most certainly need them on the left as well, especially since self-serving socialists have hijacked the Democratic Party.
Via: Memeorandum
Via: Left Coast Rebel
Via: Sister Toldjah
Via: The Last Tradition
Art is sacramental
Yea, I know the title is obvious, but sometimes we can stand being reminded of the obvious, like when we attend Mass each Sunday.
Due to absolutely no planning on my part, this is becoming culture week here at Καθολικός διάκονος. It began with my purchase of John Leland’s wonderful treatise on Keoruac’s On the Road last week and my subsequent reading it. Today, I read Stephen Hunter’s article in Commentary: Clyde and Bonnie Died for Nihilsim, about the 1967 film featuring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. While it is a very insightful article about this film and what it tells us about the time it was made, which affects us now, it caused me to member that Faye Dunaway is an adult convert to the Catholic Church. In fact, she begins a 1999 article for Esquire magazine in the following way:
"I'm a bit high maintenance, but it gets your attention. A little hot and cold never hurts.
"I regret so much. I've made mistakes. I've hurt people. I've done things
I'm not proud of. But on the other hand, that way lies madness, you know?
"The impulse toward perfection is more important than perfection itself.
"It doesn't really matter what other people think.
"Great artists never know if they're making the right choice. I'm a new Catholic. I love the church; I love mass. I go every morning at 6:30. When I'm on the right track spiritually and emotionally, things happen in my life. It's mysterious."
Reading this, in turn, caused me to think about Andy Warhol’s faith; the fact that he was, by all accounts, a practicing Catholic his whole life, as a recent exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, brought to my attention over on The Deacon’s Bench, reiterated. Of course, this is old news, as an article by art historian James Romaine, which originally appeared in Regeneration Quarterly back in 2003, shows. This piece subsequently found its way over to the website Godspy in the same year.
It is important to point out that Warhol(a) was a Byzantine Catholic. Hence, I think Romaine is very spot-on by writing that "Warhol's strategy of representing heaven by repeated images has been linked to Byzantine icons, which limit individual creativity in favor of a standardized form."
Romaine’s article, Transubstantiating the Culture: Andy Warhol’s Secret, is succinct and certainly open to interrogation from many angles, but I think what he writes corresponds well with Warhol’s life and art, as this snippet towards the end of his piece indicates:
"Indeed, Warhol's approach to art and Christianity exemplify what H. Richard Niebuhr, in Christ and Culture, famously called "Christ the Transformer of Culture." Just as Christ transformed common bread and wine into the holy sacraments, Warhol transformed everyday imagery into art.
"The popularity of Warhol's work is a reflection of our own hunger for such transformation. Like all art, it raises questions: Are we hungry enough to accept anything offered to us? How are we to be discerning? Was Warhol discerning? If we are to 'test each spirit,' should we filter out Warhol? Was Warhol so hungry for something divine that he too easily accepted substitutes for the one thing that would satisfy him?"
Due to absolutely no planning on my part, this is becoming culture week here at Καθολικός διάκονος. It began with my purchase of John Leland’s wonderful treatise on Keoruac’s On the Road last week and my subsequent reading it. Today, I read Stephen Hunter’s article in Commentary: Clyde and Bonnie Died for Nihilsim, about the 1967 film featuring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. While it is a very insightful article about this film and what it tells us about the time it was made, which affects us now, it caused me to member that Faye Dunaway is an adult convert to the Catholic Church. In fact, she begins a 1999 article for Esquire magazine in the following way:
"I'm a bit high maintenance, but it gets your attention. A little hot and cold never hurts.
"I regret so much. I've made mistakes. I've hurt people. I've done things
I'm not proud of. But on the other hand, that way lies madness, you know?
"The impulse toward perfection is more important than perfection itself.
"It doesn't really matter what other people think.
"Great artists never know if they're making the right choice. I'm a new Catholic. I love the church; I love mass. I go every morning at 6:30. When I'm on the right track spiritually and emotionally, things happen in my life. It's mysterious."
Reading this, in turn, caused me to think about Andy Warhol’s faith; the fact that he was, by all accounts, a practicing Catholic his whole life, as a recent exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, brought to my attention over on The Deacon’s Bench, reiterated. Of course, this is old news, as an article by art historian James Romaine, which originally appeared in Regeneration Quarterly back in 2003, shows. This piece subsequently found its way over to the website Godspy in the same year.
It is important to point out that Warhol(a) was a Byzantine Catholic. Hence, I think Romaine is very spot-on by writing that "Warhol's strategy of representing heaven by repeated images has been linked to Byzantine icons, which limit individual creativity in favor of a standardized form."
Romaine’s article, Transubstantiating the Culture: Andy Warhol’s Secret, is succinct and certainly open to interrogation from many angles, but I think what he writes corresponds well with Warhol’s life and art, as this snippet towards the end of his piece indicates:
"Indeed, Warhol's approach to art and Christianity exemplify what H. Richard Niebuhr, in Christ and Culture, famously called "Christ the Transformer of Culture." Just as Christ transformed common bread and wine into the holy sacraments, Warhol transformed everyday imagery into art.
"The popularity of Warhol's work is a reflection of our own hunger for such transformation. Like all art, it raises questions: Are we hungry enough to accept anything offered to us? How are we to be discerning? Was Warhol discerning? If we are to 'test each spirit,' should we filter out Warhol? Was Warhol so hungry for something divine that he too easily accepted substitutes for the one thing that would satisfy him?"
Friendship and obedience
At the very end of Is It Possible to Live This Way?: An Unusual Approach to Christian Existence, vol. 1- Faith, Giussani says something that strikes me when I read it. Because it's true it is challenging. It is about human relationships and how these relationships become friendships:
"The problem of the indissolubility of marriage is the great sign of any human companionship: it can't last" (pg. 158). These words may seem surprising, but they should not be because all Giussani is doing is calling out our sentimentalism, our avoidance of reality by refusing to say, not what he "should" say (he is saying what he should say), what we want to hear, which are exalted words about marriage. Marriage, which he is using as a paradigm of human relationships, is difficult and it is no great secret that many marriages, including those of people married in the church, fail.
He moves next to something we might label the law of entropy as it applies to human relationships: Very often, if a marriage lasts, he continues, "it's due to interest in political or economic power, because satisfaction as such is so flimsy that it immediately decays" (ibid). This is not true of real satisfaction, that which corresponds to your heart, but the satisfaction that is sought by what attracts us and what we go after without considering it in the light of reason, in the light of reality, but sentimentally, ignoring reality. In other words, we miss the mark by investing our happiness completely in the other person, who, being a human being, will not ultimately satisfy us. This dynamic is demonstrated by couples who go off on their own and try to build a world that consists of only them. This is an unhealthy attachment. This satisfaction does not begin to decay until we possess the one we in whom we mistakenly believe our destiny lies.
It is God who seeks to attract us through other people. It is only by recognizing this that we can form genuine friendships. Hence, "[t]he more the presence of the other [person] awakens the passion for his or her destiny in you; that is, it truly becomes love. Friendship, which is mutual love, is the law of obedience" (ibid).
We adhere to friends, we stick to them. A friend is not extraneous to life, but necessary. Together we follow the One who placed us in each other's lives.
"The problem of the indissolubility of marriage is the great sign of any human companionship: it can't last" (pg. 158). These words may seem surprising, but they should not be because all Giussani is doing is calling out our sentimentalism, our avoidance of reality by refusing to say, not what he "should" say (he is saying what he should say), what we want to hear, which are exalted words about marriage. Marriage, which he is using as a paradigm of human relationships, is difficult and it is no great secret that many marriages, including those of people married in the church, fail.
He moves next to something we might label the law of entropy as it applies to human relationships: Very often, if a marriage lasts, he continues, "it's due to interest in political or economic power, because satisfaction as such is so flimsy that it immediately decays" (ibid). This is not true of real satisfaction, that which corresponds to your heart, but the satisfaction that is sought by what attracts us and what we go after without considering it in the light of reason, in the light of reality, but sentimentally, ignoring reality. In other words, we miss the mark by investing our happiness completely in the other person, who, being a human being, will not ultimately satisfy us. This dynamic is demonstrated by couples who go off on their own and try to build a world that consists of only them. This is an unhealthy attachment. This satisfaction does not begin to decay until we possess the one we in whom we mistakenly believe our destiny lies.
It is God who seeks to attract us through other people. It is only by recognizing this that we can form genuine friendships. Hence, "[t]he more the presence of the other [person] awakens the passion for his or her destiny in you; that is, it truly becomes love. Friendship, which is mutual love, is the law of obedience" (ibid).
We adhere to friends, we stick to them. A friend is not extraneous to life, but necessary. Together we follow the One who placed us in each other's lives.
Nicking the beat myth
In obsessing, as is my wont, I undercovered an interview from 2007 in the British on-line magazine, Notes from the Underground, with Carolyn Cassady, the wife of Neal Cassady, who is portrayed as Dean Moriarity in On the Road. She is ostensibly portrayed in the book as Camille.
The entire interview is worth reading. It's funny how reading a short little book found in the remainder bin of a suburban chain bookstore can spark a raging fire of memory, bringing to light, again, thoughts I haven't thought in years! Kerouac despised the popular image of him. He saw it for what it was, a market ploy. A sort of cartharsis achieved, at least for now...
Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac
The entire interview is worth reading. It's funny how reading a short little book found in the remainder bin of a suburban chain bookstore can spark a raging fire of memory, bringing to light, again, thoughts I haven't thought in years! Kerouac despised the popular image of him. He saw it for what it was, a market ploy. A sort of cartharsis achieved, at least for now...
"'Jack', she mourns, 'got dragged into it…' Jack Kerouac is a great example of what misrepresentation can do to a writer. He wanted to join the canon of great American writers – Jack London, Tom Wolfe, Ernest Hemingway-and the role he was cast in instead proved devastating, as Cassady explains. 'He was called the "King of the Beats" and the "Father of the Hippies", he told me that he was going to drink himself to death. He was so sensitive, so self-conscious, and so paranoid that he just couldn’t stand the image that had been created of him. All the hippie stuff was just so alien to what his dreams had been…it destroyed him.' To what extent does an artist have control over how his work is perceived once it’s in the public domain? It’s a fascinating case study of an artist trying to escape his caricature. As every depth was plunged for commodity –'his awful poems, his awful drunken doodles, his awful play' – Jack found the only means of escape in alcohol."It's been a manic day. Deo gratias!
"Arrange your life and shut your mouth"
Like a lot of guys, reading Jack Kerouac's On the Road as a young man was transformative for me. It is safe to say that reading this book, along with Merton's Seven Story Mountain, John Henry Cardinal Newman's Apologia pro Sua Vita, seeing Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ, and my consequent reading of Kazantzakis' book on which the film was based, constitute prime reasons I am Catholic. All of these works came into the orbit of my life in a very compressed period of time. Between the ages of 21 and 27, when I got married, I took great pride in the fact that I could fit everything I owned into my Volkswagen Rabbit. When things got overwhelming, I had an escapist fantasy of loading everything up and driving to different city to begin life anew.
John Leland's book, Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of On the Road (They're Not What You Think), is quite a remarkable and, at least to my mind, an honest reading of Kerouac's On the Road. Leland contends that Kerouac's remarkable book is revered for all the wrong reasons and that there is a mystique that has grown up around the book that bears little resemblance to the book itself. Indeed, Kerouac was no rebel, at least not in a conventional sense.
Kerouac died in 1969 at 47 years of age, due to complications of his heavy drinking. He had nothing for the hippies and counter-culturalists. He especially despised their anti-Americanism. One of the problems people have with Kerouac in general, and On the Road in particular is that Jack "had very traditional values, and that he lived a life at odds with these values. In the sixties, when he repudiated any connection with the counterculture, declaring William F. Buckley his hero, many thought the booze and bitterness had curdled his mind. But Kerouac had always been conservative - a blue collar son, Catholic, a veteran of the merchant marine and (briefly) the navy. 'I believed in a good home,' he wrote in the scroll draft [of On the Road], 'in sane living, in good food, good times, work, faith and hope. I have always believed these things. It was with some amazement that I realized I was one of the few people in the world who really believed in these things without going around making a dull middleclass philosophy out of it'" (28-29). Leland quotes William Burroughs, a friend with whom Kerouac had frequent fallings out over their diametrically opposed politics, as saying: "It's generally construed that Jack underwent some sort of a change and became more conservative... But he was always conservative. Those ideas never changed. He was always the same" (29).
Commenting on his book after its publication, Kerouac said of Moriarity (Neal Cassady) an Paradise (Kerouac): "I forgot to mention that we were both devout little Catholics in our childhood, which gives us something in common tho we never talk about it" (Leland 18-19). Kerouac also described his book as the adventures of two Catholic buddies. Leland writes of Kerouac that he drifted from Catholicism in his teens "and as an adult discovered and eventually discarded Buddhism, settling finally on a home-grown form of mystic Catholicism. But he held always to the mysterious and gnostic, and to a prophet's sense of time, which articulates the past within the fallen present" (19). But, alas, faith for Jack "often seemed more a remote goal for his life than a day-to-day pillar" (30).
Therefore, I have been amused over the years by the treatment that Kerouac and On the Road have received by many with whom he would have agreed, like people who write for the journal First Things (link to the search results from typing Kerouac into the journal's search engine), to which I subscribed for many years. I still like the journal a great deal. The late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, whom I revere, once referred to Kerouac as "an absolutely stoned would be Maoist," to which Kerouac might well have responded: "Who're you calling a would be Maoist?" Prof. Robert Reno, with whom I am generally in agreement, back in the October 2008 edition, wrote a very unsympathetic and disparaging assessment of On the Road, entitled The End of the Road. By itself, but certainly by way of comparison, Leland's take is nothing short of masterful because it is honest and deals with the book and with Jack Kerouac, and not the legend propagated by people who have likely never read On the Road, or who have read it only once and in a cursory way with a lot of preconceptions.
So, we need a little 10,000 Maniacs, fronted by the always lovely Natalie Merchant, singing Hey Jack Kerouac for a Monday, a day when reality weighs most heavily on us. Finding himself in an impersonal and complacent place of work, Sal laments: "This is the story of America: Everybody's doing what they think they're supposed to do." A jab at the hyper-Calvinistic, "Look busy, Jesus is coming," ethos into which we very often fall.
It is good that this floods me during my annual novena to St. Peter Julian Eymard.
Like my dear Camus, Kerouac's rebellion was metaphysical, not mundane. The difference being Jack's undying belief in God, the search for whom he gave himself entirely. You might say, "Hey, wait a minute! Didn't you quote Leland to the effect that Kerouac lacked faith?" Yes, I did. Faith cannot be reduced merely to belief. After all, as Chesterton observed, "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing — they believe in anything."
This post beautifully evokes the original name of this blog: Scott Dodge for Nobody, riffing off an old radio program here in SLC: Tom Waits for Nobody and the poet, Ron Seitz's memory vision of Pater Tom, A Song for Nobody .
John Leland's book, Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of On the Road (They're Not What You Think), is quite a remarkable and, at least to my mind, an honest reading of Kerouac's On the Road. Leland contends that Kerouac's remarkable book is revered for all the wrong reasons and that there is a mystique that has grown up around the book that bears little resemblance to the book itself. Indeed, Kerouac was no rebel, at least not in a conventional sense.
Kerouac died in 1969 at 47 years of age, due to complications of his heavy drinking. He had nothing for the hippies and counter-culturalists. He especially despised their anti-Americanism. One of the problems people have with Kerouac in general, and On the Road in particular is that Jack "had very traditional values, and that he lived a life at odds with these values. In the sixties, when he repudiated any connection with the counterculture, declaring William F. Buckley his hero, many thought the booze and bitterness had curdled his mind. But Kerouac had always been conservative - a blue collar son, Catholic, a veteran of the merchant marine and (briefly) the navy. 'I believed in a good home,' he wrote in the scroll draft [of On the Road], 'in sane living, in good food, good times, work, faith and hope. I have always believed these things. It was with some amazement that I realized I was one of the few people in the world who really believed in these things without going around making a dull middleclass philosophy out of it'" (28-29). Leland quotes William Burroughs, a friend with whom Kerouac had frequent fallings out over their diametrically opposed politics, as saying: "It's generally construed that Jack underwent some sort of a change and became more conservative... But he was always conservative. Those ideas never changed. He was always the same" (29).
Commenting on his book after its publication, Kerouac said of Moriarity (Neal Cassady) an Paradise (Kerouac): "I forgot to mention that we were both devout little Catholics in our childhood, which gives us something in common tho we never talk about it" (Leland 18-19). Kerouac also described his book as the adventures of two Catholic buddies. Leland writes of Kerouac that he drifted from Catholicism in his teens "and as an adult discovered and eventually discarded Buddhism, settling finally on a home-grown form of mystic Catholicism. But he held always to the mysterious and gnostic, and to a prophet's sense of time, which articulates the past within the fallen present" (19). But, alas, faith for Jack "often seemed more a remote goal for his life than a day-to-day pillar" (30).
Therefore, I have been amused over the years by the treatment that Kerouac and On the Road have received by many with whom he would have agreed, like people who write for the journal First Things (link to the search results from typing Kerouac into the journal's search engine), to which I subscribed for many years. I still like the journal a great deal. The late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, whom I revere, once referred to Kerouac as "an absolutely stoned would be Maoist," to which Kerouac might well have responded: "Who're you calling a would be Maoist?" Prof. Robert Reno, with whom I am generally in agreement, back in the October 2008 edition, wrote a very unsympathetic and disparaging assessment of On the Road, entitled The End of the Road. By itself, but certainly by way of comparison, Leland's take is nothing short of masterful because it is honest and deals with the book and with Jack Kerouac, and not the legend propagated by people who have likely never read On the Road, or who have read it only once and in a cursory way with a lot of preconceptions.
So, we need a little 10,000 Maniacs, fronted by the always lovely Natalie Merchant, singing Hey Jack Kerouac for a Monday, a day when reality weighs most heavily on us. Finding himself in an impersonal and complacent place of work, Sal laments: "This is the story of America: Everybody's doing what they think they're supposed to do." A jab at the hyper-Calvinistic, "Look busy, Jesus is coming," ethos into which we very often fall.
It is good that this floods me during my annual novena to St. Peter Julian Eymard.
Like my dear Camus, Kerouac's rebellion was metaphysical, not mundane. The difference being Jack's undying belief in God, the search for whom he gave himself entirely. You might say, "Hey, wait a minute! Didn't you quote Leland to the effect that Kerouac lacked faith?" Yes, I did. Faith cannot be reduced merely to belief. After all, as Chesterton observed, "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing — they believe in anything."
This post beautifully evokes the original name of this blog: Scott Dodge for Nobody, riffing off an old radio program here in SLC: Tom Waits for Nobody and the poet, Ron Seitz's memory vision of Pater Tom, A Song for Nobody .
Year C 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: Gen. 18:20-32; Ps 138:1-3. 6-8; Col. 2:12-14; Luke 11:1-13
Today’s readings tell us two very important things about God: God is merciful, not wanting to anyone to perish, and God is faithful. Our readings today also show us what it looks like to have a personal, even intimate, relationship with God. In our first reading, Abraham, who is our father because of his faith, as he does with the story of his whole life, gives very concrete expression to what Jesus teaches about prayer in today’s Gospel (Rom. 4:9-12). All of this is summarized quite succinctly in our Psalm response: "Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me." Our second reading, in a manner more subtle than our Psalm response, also connects our reading from Genesis with today’s Gospel. It does this by discussing baptism, describing it as being "buried" with Christ and then being "also raised with him through faith in the power of God who raised [Christ] from the dead" (Col. 2:12).
Jesus teaches that we must approach the Father in prayer with confidence. Our confidence is in God, who is merciful and faithful, truly a heavenly Father, the best of fathers, who longs to give you, not just what you ask for, but to draw you into the divine life of the Blessed Trinity. The biggest problem we encounter with prayer is set forth well by the twentieth century Christian spiritual master, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom: the seeming absence of God when we pray. It is important to realize that, indeed, God is not absent, but everywhere present. "[I]f I lie down in [Hell], you are there too," the psalmist sings of God’s omnipresence (Ps. 139:8). What are we to make of this situation, with which I daresay most, if not all of us, are all familiar? There are two things to keep in mind.
The first thing we must realize is that prayer is a relationship. As such, it involves more than one person. God does not make us pray. He leaves us free in this regard. Just so, to pray is not to summon God as if He were a genie in a bottle that we need only rub three times in order to make appear. No! "The fact that God can make Himself present or can leave us with the sense of His absence" is indicative "of this real and live relationship" (Beginning to Pray 26). After all, if we could mechanically draw God into an encounter, "force Him to meet us, simply because we have chosen this moment to meet Him, there would be no relationship" because this would not be an encounter, but a summons (26). This comes even more to the fore when we realize how often do we not have time for God, when we effectively say to Him, "Not now, I am busy."
The second thing we must keep in mind is that to encounter the living God is awesome, perhaps even awful, meaning to be filled with awe, because every encounter with the living God "is always a moment of judgment" (27). Metropolitan Anthony goes on to say that it is impossible to "meet God in prayer or meditation and not be either saved or condemned" (27). Of course, this is not meant in an ultimate sense, as if when we finally encounter God in prayer we will in that moment be eternally saved or eternally condemned. It means that when we truly encounter the living God it creates a crisis. Our word crisis comes to us from Greek and means to decide, to judge. In other words, there are times we should be grateful to God "that He does not… present Himself to us when we wish to meet Him" precisely because He is merciful by not coming to us "in an untimely way," thus giving us an opportunity to judge ourselves and sparing us when it might mean condemnation.
Metropolitan Anthony tells the story of a man who wanted very badly to see God and asked this holy priest to show him God. Anthony told the man that even if he was capable of showing him God, he would not be able to see God because to encounter God it is necessary to have something in common. So, he asked the man to tell him if there was a passage from any of the Gospels that moved him. The man responded by saying that he was moved by the story of the woman taken in adultery. He then asked his earnest inquirer who he was in the scene: the Lord, "full of mercy, of understanding," or did he see himself as the sinful woman, or perhaps as one of the men ready to stone her who, at Jesus’ words, walks away, having been made aware of his own sin? The man paused, then said "No, I feel I am the only Jew would not have walked [away] but who would have stoned the woman" (27-28). To which Metropolitan Anthony responded: "Thank God that He does not allow you to meet Him face-to-face" (28).
Like the man who wanted to see God, we must be relentlessly honest before God. God cannot be blinded, distracted, or deceived. Most often we do not flatly refuse God’s word or Christ’s teachings, but we frequently "ignore the divine presence and act according to our own desires [and] moods, contrary to everything that is God’s [expressed] will" for us (28). In trying to blind God, we only succeed in blinding ourselves. There are times when we can only come into God’s presence repentant and broken-hearted and not in the way "we immediately wish to be received," which is as if nothing had happened. This, too, my friends is a great mercy and the primary reason for the sacrament of penance (28). Like father Abraham, we approach God saying, "See how I am presuming to speak to my Lord, though I am but dust and ashes"(Gen. 18:27).
Too often, like the centurion who wants Jesus to heal his daughter, but does not want the Lord to enter his house, or Peter who says to the Lord, "Depart from me… for I am a sinful man," we want something from the Lord, but we do not want Him. (Matt. 8:8; Luke 5:8). We just want Him to give us what we ask for and then go away. This same attitude afflicts our relationships with people, treating them as means to be employed towards some self-serving end. Even when we pray intensely for someone we love, or a matter of great concern to ourselves, it does not necessarily mean that God matters to us. In fact, even while praying, after “you have made your passionate, deep, intense [petition] concerning the person you love or the situation that worries you, and you turn to the next item, which does not matter” to you quite as much, you often turn cold and mechanical. What happened? Did God leave, or grow uninterested? Most certainly not! "[I]t means that all the elation, all the intensity in your prayer was not borne of God’s presence, of your faith in Him, of your longing for Him, of your awareness of Him" (29).
In order to be able to encounter God in prayer, to be friends with God, like Abraham, "[w]e must recognize that He is God, that He is King, we must surrender to Him," like Job, who, after being informed that his oxen, asses, sheep, shepherds, camels had all been seized in different raids and that all his children, who were gathered in one house, had been killed, tore his cloak, “cut off his hair…cast himself prostrate upon the ground, and said, ‘Naked I came forth from my mother's womb, and naked shall I go back again. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD’” (Bloom 30; Job 1:13-21). Of course, Job’s faithfulness was rewarded in the end. While assets and houses can be replaced, children cannot. After all, as some of us here know, having more children does not erase the pain of losing a child. So, it is only Jesus Christ, who out of great love descended from unimaginable glory to become for us the man sorrows, who can wipe away our tears and take away our pain and emptiness, and bring us to new life, which isn’t merely a life lived for others, but a life of self-sacrificing service to others lived for Him.
Jesus’ point in today’s Gospel is not that God will give you whatever you ask for, or even that God will only give what you need. In his second encyclical, Spe Salvi, the Holy Father points to a letter on prayer written by Saint Augustine to Proba, a wealthy Roman widow, in which he said "ultimately we want only one thing—'the blessed life', the life which is simply life, simply 'happiness'. In the final analysis, there is nothing else that we ask for in prayer" (par. 11). Dear friends, only Christ can give us "the life which is simply life." He does this by giving us Himself, body, blood, soul, and divinity by the power of the Holy Spirit in this very Eucharist. In return, he asks you to give yourself to Him, body, blood, soul, and humanity.
Today’s readings tell us two very important things about God: God is merciful, not wanting to anyone to perish, and God is faithful. Our readings today also show us what it looks like to have a personal, even intimate, relationship with God. In our first reading, Abraham, who is our father because of his faith, as he does with the story of his whole life, gives very concrete expression to what Jesus teaches about prayer in today’s Gospel (Rom. 4:9-12). All of this is summarized quite succinctly in our Psalm response: "Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me." Our second reading, in a manner more subtle than our Psalm response, also connects our reading from Genesis with today’s Gospel. It does this by discussing baptism, describing it as being "buried" with Christ and then being "also raised with him through faith in the power of God who raised [Christ] from the dead" (Col. 2:12).
Jesus teaches that we must approach the Father in prayer with confidence. Our confidence is in God, who is merciful and faithful, truly a heavenly Father, the best of fathers, who longs to give you, not just what you ask for, but to draw you into the divine life of the Blessed Trinity. The biggest problem we encounter with prayer is set forth well by the twentieth century Christian spiritual master, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom: the seeming absence of God when we pray. It is important to realize that, indeed, God is not absent, but everywhere present. "[I]f I lie down in [Hell], you are there too," the psalmist sings of God’s omnipresence (Ps. 139:8). What are we to make of this situation, with which I daresay most, if not all of us, are all familiar? There are two things to keep in mind.
The first thing we must realize is that prayer is a relationship. As such, it involves more than one person. God does not make us pray. He leaves us free in this regard. Just so, to pray is not to summon God as if He were a genie in a bottle that we need only rub three times in order to make appear. No! "The fact that God can make Himself present or can leave us with the sense of His absence" is indicative "of this real and live relationship" (Beginning to Pray 26). After all, if we could mechanically draw God into an encounter, "force Him to meet us, simply because we have chosen this moment to meet Him, there would be no relationship" because this would not be an encounter, but a summons (26). This comes even more to the fore when we realize how often do we not have time for God, when we effectively say to Him, "Not now, I am busy."
The second thing we must keep in mind is that to encounter the living God is awesome, perhaps even awful, meaning to be filled with awe, because every encounter with the living God "is always a moment of judgment" (27). Metropolitan Anthony goes on to say that it is impossible to "meet God in prayer or meditation and not be either saved or condemned" (27). Of course, this is not meant in an ultimate sense, as if when we finally encounter God in prayer we will in that moment be eternally saved or eternally condemned. It means that when we truly encounter the living God it creates a crisis. Our word crisis comes to us from Greek and means to decide, to judge. In other words, there are times we should be grateful to God "that He does not… present Himself to us when we wish to meet Him" precisely because He is merciful by not coming to us "in an untimely way," thus giving us an opportunity to judge ourselves and sparing us when it might mean condemnation.
Metropolitan Anthony tells the story of a man who wanted very badly to see God and asked this holy priest to show him God. Anthony told the man that even if he was capable of showing him God, he would not be able to see God because to encounter God it is necessary to have something in common. So, he asked the man to tell him if there was a passage from any of the Gospels that moved him. The man responded by saying that he was moved by the story of the woman taken in adultery. He then asked his earnest inquirer who he was in the scene: the Lord, "full of mercy, of understanding," or did he see himself as the sinful woman, or perhaps as one of the men ready to stone her who, at Jesus’ words, walks away, having been made aware of his own sin? The man paused, then said "No, I feel I am the only Jew would not have walked [away] but who would have stoned the woman" (27-28). To which Metropolitan Anthony responded: "Thank God that He does not allow you to meet Him face-to-face" (28).
Like the man who wanted to see God, we must be relentlessly honest before God. God cannot be blinded, distracted, or deceived. Most often we do not flatly refuse God’s word or Christ’s teachings, but we frequently "ignore the divine presence and act according to our own desires [and] moods, contrary to everything that is God’s [expressed] will" for us (28). In trying to blind God, we only succeed in blinding ourselves. There are times when we can only come into God’s presence repentant and broken-hearted and not in the way "we immediately wish to be received," which is as if nothing had happened. This, too, my friends is a great mercy and the primary reason for the sacrament of penance (28). Like father Abraham, we approach God saying, "See how I am presuming to speak to my Lord, though I am but dust and ashes"(Gen. 18:27).
Abraham, by Guy Rowe
Too often, like the centurion who wants Jesus to heal his daughter, but does not want the Lord to enter his house, or Peter who says to the Lord, "Depart from me… for I am a sinful man," we want something from the Lord, but we do not want Him. (Matt. 8:8; Luke 5:8). We just want Him to give us what we ask for and then go away. This same attitude afflicts our relationships with people, treating them as means to be employed towards some self-serving end. Even when we pray intensely for someone we love, or a matter of great concern to ourselves, it does not necessarily mean that God matters to us. In fact, even while praying, after “you have made your passionate, deep, intense [petition] concerning the person you love or the situation that worries you, and you turn to the next item, which does not matter” to you quite as much, you often turn cold and mechanical. What happened? Did God leave, or grow uninterested? Most certainly not! "[I]t means that all the elation, all the intensity in your prayer was not borne of God’s presence, of your faith in Him, of your longing for Him, of your awareness of Him" (29).
In order to be able to encounter God in prayer, to be friends with God, like Abraham, "[w]e must recognize that He is God, that He is King, we must surrender to Him," like Job, who, after being informed that his oxen, asses, sheep, shepherds, camels had all been seized in different raids and that all his children, who were gathered in one house, had been killed, tore his cloak, “cut off his hair…cast himself prostrate upon the ground, and said, ‘Naked I came forth from my mother's womb, and naked shall I go back again. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD’” (Bloom 30; Job 1:13-21). Of course, Job’s faithfulness was rewarded in the end. While assets and houses can be replaced, children cannot. After all, as some of us here know, having more children does not erase the pain of losing a child. So, it is only Jesus Christ, who out of great love descended from unimaginable glory to become for us the man sorrows, who can wipe away our tears and take away our pain and emptiness, and bring us to new life, which isn’t merely a life lived for others, but a life of self-sacrificing service to others lived for Him.
Jesus’ point in today’s Gospel is not that God will give you whatever you ask for, or even that God will only give what you need. In his second encyclical, Spe Salvi, the Holy Father points to a letter on prayer written by Saint Augustine to Proba, a wealthy Roman widow, in which he said "ultimately we want only one thing—'the blessed life', the life which is simply life, simply 'happiness'. In the final analysis, there is nothing else that we ask for in prayer" (par. 11). Dear friends, only Christ can give us "the life which is simply life." He does this by giving us Himself, body, blood, soul, and divinity by the power of the Holy Spirit in this very Eucharist. In return, he asks you to give yourself to Him, body, blood, soul, and humanity.
Novena to St. Peter Julian Eymard and miscellania
Today begins the novena to St. Peter Julian Eymard, the apostle of the Eucharist and founder of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament. This particular order has been such a blessing to me for many years. One of my dearest and most beloved friends, my long-time confessor and spiritual director, Fr. J.T. Lane belongs to this congregation, as does my first confessor, the late and dearly remembered Fr. Maurice Prefontaine. My life has also been very blessed by Frs. Dana Pelotte and Mike Arkins, as well as Bro. David. I am so sad that the Congregation's St. Ann's province no longer has a presence in the western U.S., especially here in Salt Lake City where they are still very beloved and missed.
St. Peter Julian's feast day is 2 August. So, the annual novena to him commences today and finishes Monday, 1 August. So, if you have a specific need or intention, whether it's personal, or for someone else, please join in praying this novena, asking St. Peter Julian to intercede for your need. Bring whatever, whether for discernment, health (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual), a job, school, whatever. During these nine days, visit the Blessed Sacrament as often as you can, especially if doing so results in you making some personal sacrifice. Also consider closing the novena by going to confession during this time and assisting at Mass on 2 August.
Novena prayer, prayed daily for nine days:
Saint Peter Julian, who listened with such loving response to the voice of Jesus, help us also to listen and hear Him as He calls us to serve Him each in our own vocation. Help us especially during this Novena when we turn with our petitions to your powerful intercession.
(intentions… mention in the quietness of your own heart).
Lord Jesus Christ, through Your grace, St. Peter Julian understood the Eucharist to be Your Gift of Self to the world. May our prayers lead us to an ardent love of the Eucharist so that, like St. Peter Julian, we may shine in the world with the Radiance of Your Presence, a radiance that will silently say:
Jesus is there- let us go to Him!
St. Peter Julian, Apostle of the Eucharist, pray for us.
Day 1, 24 July:
O Sacrament most Holy, O Sacrament divine, all praise and all thanksgiving be every moment thine.
Our Lady of the most Blessed Sacrament, pray for us.
St. Peter Julian, pray for us.
Peter Julian Eymard was born on 4 February 1811 in La Mure d’Isere near Grenoble in the French Alps, and was baptised there the following day. The younger of only two surviving children of his parents, Madeleine and Julien, he showed a great devotion to the Blessed Sacrament from his earliest years. As a small child, he took on the task of ringing a bell through the streets of La Mure to announce that Mass time was near. This was indeed prophetic as his whole life would eventually be dedicated to proclaiming Jesus’ Eucharistic Presence in the world and encouraging devotion to Him.
AND YOU LITTLE CHILD, YOU SHALL BE CALLED PROPHET OF GOD THE MOST HIGH FOR YOU WILL GO BEFORE THE LORD TO PREPARE THE WAY FOR HIM. TO GIVE TO THE PEOPLE KNOWLEDGE OF SALVATION… (Luke 1:76-77).
St Peter Julian,
We pray that through your intercession and inspired by your example, people may be drawn to honour and join Jesus in the Eucharistic celebration, and that those who have drifted away may once again find fullness of joy in His Presence.
St. Peter Julian, pray for us.
See Blessed Sacrament novena webpage.
Miscellania
I visited a suburban Barnes and Noble because you can very often find really great books in the remainder bins of these stores. I picked up A Roland Barthes Reader, complied by the late Susan Sontag. This contains several Barthes' works I have not previously read. The real gem I unearthed was a copy of James L. Kugel's How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture Then and Now. Kugel is an Orthodox Jew and world renown biblical scholar who now lives and teaches in Jerusalem. Dr. Kugel has a remarkable website, which will appear in my sidebar. I also acquired a very inexpensive copy of John Leland's Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of On the Road (They're Not What You Think). Finally, I bought A Daybook of Prayer: Meditations, Scriptures, and Prayers to Draw Near to the Heart of God, which is a wonderful anthology. When I will have the leisure to read them remains unknown.
St. Peter Julian's feast day is 2 August. So, the annual novena to him commences today and finishes Monday, 1 August. So, if you have a specific need or intention, whether it's personal, or for someone else, please join in praying this novena, asking St. Peter Julian to intercede for your need. Bring whatever, whether for discernment, health (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual), a job, school, whatever. During these nine days, visit the Blessed Sacrament as often as you can, especially if doing so results in you making some personal sacrifice. Also consider closing the novena by going to confession during this time and assisting at Mass on 2 August.
Novena prayer, prayed daily for nine days:
Saint Peter Julian, who listened with such loving response to the voice of Jesus, help us also to listen and hear Him as He calls us to serve Him each in our own vocation. Help us especially during this Novena when we turn with our petitions to your powerful intercession.
(intentions… mention in the quietness of your own heart).
Lord Jesus Christ, through Your grace, St. Peter Julian understood the Eucharist to be Your Gift of Self to the world. May our prayers lead us to an ardent love of the Eucharist so that, like St. Peter Julian, we may shine in the world with the Radiance of Your Presence, a radiance that will silently say:
Jesus is there- let us go to Him!
St. Peter Julian, Apostle of the Eucharist, pray for us.
Day 1, 24 July:
O Sacrament most Holy, O Sacrament divine, all praise and all thanksgiving be every moment thine.
Our Lady of the most Blessed Sacrament, pray for us.
St. Peter Julian, pray for us.
Peter Julian Eymard was born on 4 February 1811 in La Mure d’Isere near Grenoble in the French Alps, and was baptised there the following day. The younger of only two surviving children of his parents, Madeleine and Julien, he showed a great devotion to the Blessed Sacrament from his earliest years. As a small child, he took on the task of ringing a bell through the streets of La Mure to announce that Mass time was near. This was indeed prophetic as his whole life would eventually be dedicated to proclaiming Jesus’ Eucharistic Presence in the world and encouraging devotion to Him.
AND YOU LITTLE CHILD, YOU SHALL BE CALLED PROPHET OF GOD THE MOST HIGH FOR YOU WILL GO BEFORE THE LORD TO PREPARE THE WAY FOR HIM. TO GIVE TO THE PEOPLE KNOWLEDGE OF SALVATION… (Luke 1:76-77).
St Peter Julian,
We pray that through your intercession and inspired by your example, people may be drawn to honour and join Jesus in the Eucharistic celebration, and that those who have drifted away may once again find fullness of joy in His Presence.
St. Peter Julian, pray for us.
See Blessed Sacrament novena webpage.
Miscellania
I visited a suburban Barnes and Noble because you can very often find really great books in the remainder bins of these stores. I picked up A Roland Barthes Reader, complied by the late Susan Sontag. This contains several Barthes' works I have not previously read. The real gem I unearthed was a copy of James L. Kugel's How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture Then and Now. Kugel is an Orthodox Jew and world renown biblical scholar who now lives and teaches in Jerusalem. Dr. Kugel has a remarkable website, which will appear in my sidebar. I also acquired a very inexpensive copy of John Leland's Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of On the Road (They're Not What You Think). Finally, I bought A Daybook of Prayer: Meditations, Scriptures, and Prayers to Draw Near to the Heart of God, which is a wonderful anthology. When I will have the leisure to read them remains unknown.
Our tolerance for truth
My very dear friend, Kim, over her blog, Faith, Fiction, and Flannery, for her Friday Flannery O'Connor quote-of-the-day, posted this yesterday: "The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."
While O'Connor is certainly correct and her observation cuts across the broad range of human experience, my mind went to moral truth. Of course, all truth is ultimately one, united as it is in the person of Jesus Christ. The reaction of many to reading this would be to concur, to give it the ol' Facebook thumbs up, but I suspect not many would allow themselves to be personally challenged by it. In my pastoral experience the issues many people "dissent" from are those that really challenge their lazy assumptions, those things that would necessitate a major change in their lives, those things that hit them where they leave, so to speak, whether it is an aspect of the Church's social teaching, or the Church's teaching on sexuality, etc. As Catholics we too easily try to distinguish between Christ and the Church, which means effectively setting up our demonstrably fallible selves as the sole tribunes and arbiters of truth.
While I certainly agree with the moral theologians who comprise the so-called revisionist school that human experience has to be factored into morality, we have to be careful not to mistake our fallen-ness for holiness, to dumb holiness down, to reduce Christ to our measure. In other words, just because some teaching of the Church proves a genuine challenge to a person or a group of persons, does not mean that truth needs to be re-thought and/or renounced, maybe re-formulated, which is to say nothing other than our understanding of truth is always in need of being deepened and purified, always in need of being more truthfully (lovingly) expressed.
It is distinctive of Catholicism that Christ teaches us through the Church. While there is a deep and abiding coherency to following Christ, it looks somewhat incoherent to others, who live according to a wholly different and oftentimes hostile criteria, which is why Flannery, who, along with Dorothy Day, was an obedient daughter of the Church, once averred: "You shall know the truth and truth will make you odd." It was none other than Fr. Andrew Greeley, not known for mindless and docile adherence to Church authority, who observed, in Rod Dreher's paraphrase, "that even if the Catholic church was run by psychopathic tyrants, that has nothing whatever to do with whether or not the Catholic faith is true."
What many don't realize is that what I am trying to describe above is a form of Pelagianism, which denies original sin and tells us that we become holy through our exercise of free will, that is, through our own efforts. On this view, if we prove incapable of observing something, it must not be meant to be observed. If you think this way, you don't need a Savior, you save yourself, becoming perfect through your own efforts, denying your need, the need that constitutes you as a human being, which takes the form of desire.
As he does so often the apostle comes to our aid in this quandary: "Though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Cor. 12:6-10).
Yesterday, for completely unrelated reasons, I went back and re-read Rod Dreher's apologia of sorts for becoming Orthodox, in which he wrote something relevant to the point I am trying to make:
"Basically, though -- and this is as blunt as I can be -- I'm in a church [an Orthodox Church] where I can trust the spiritual headship of the clergy, and where most people want to know more about the faith, and how we can conform our lives to it, rather than wanting to run away from it or hide it so nobody has to be offended." As one who would really be hard-pressed to think of a significant Church teaching from which I dissent (being wholly separate from my demonstrated and routine failure to live what I confess) being both Catholic and a member of the clergy, I find Dreher's words very challenging, indeed.
While O'Connor is certainly correct and her observation cuts across the broad range of human experience, my mind went to moral truth. Of course, all truth is ultimately one, united as it is in the person of Jesus Christ. The reaction of many to reading this would be to concur, to give it the ol' Facebook thumbs up, but I suspect not many would allow themselves to be personally challenged by it. In my pastoral experience the issues many people "dissent" from are those that really challenge their lazy assumptions, those things that would necessitate a major change in their lives, those things that hit them where they leave, so to speak, whether it is an aspect of the Church's social teaching, or the Church's teaching on sexuality, etc. As Catholics we too easily try to distinguish between Christ and the Church, which means effectively setting up our demonstrably fallible selves as the sole tribunes and arbiters of truth.
While I certainly agree with the moral theologians who comprise the so-called revisionist school that human experience has to be factored into morality, we have to be careful not to mistake our fallen-ness for holiness, to dumb holiness down, to reduce Christ to our measure. In other words, just because some teaching of the Church proves a genuine challenge to a person or a group of persons, does not mean that truth needs to be re-thought and/or renounced, maybe re-formulated, which is to say nothing other than our understanding of truth is always in need of being deepened and purified, always in need of being more truthfully (lovingly) expressed.
It is distinctive of Catholicism that Christ teaches us through the Church. While there is a deep and abiding coherency to following Christ, it looks somewhat incoherent to others, who live according to a wholly different and oftentimes hostile criteria, which is why Flannery, who, along with Dorothy Day, was an obedient daughter of the Church, once averred: "You shall know the truth and truth will make you odd." It was none other than Fr. Andrew Greeley, not known for mindless and docile adherence to Church authority, who observed, in Rod Dreher's paraphrase, "that even if the Catholic church was run by psychopathic tyrants, that has nothing whatever to do with whether or not the Catholic faith is true."
What many don't realize is that what I am trying to describe above is a form of Pelagianism, which denies original sin and tells us that we become holy through our exercise of free will, that is, through our own efforts. On this view, if we prove incapable of observing something, it must not be meant to be observed. If you think this way, you don't need a Savior, you save yourself, becoming perfect through your own efforts, denying your need, the need that constitutes you as a human being, which takes the form of desire.
As he does so often the apostle comes to our aid in this quandary: "Though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Cor. 12:6-10).
Yesterday, for completely unrelated reasons, I went back and re-read Rod Dreher's apologia of sorts for becoming Orthodox, in which he wrote something relevant to the point I am trying to make:
"Basically, though -- and this is as blunt as I can be -- I'm in a church [an Orthodox Church] where I can trust the spiritual headship of the clergy, and where most people want to know more about the faith, and how we can conform our lives to it, rather than wanting to run away from it or hide it so nobody has to be offended." As one who would really be hard-pressed to think of a significant Church teaching from which I dissent (being wholly separate from my demonstrated and routine failure to live what I confess) being both Catholic and a member of the clergy, I find Dreher's words very challenging, indeed.
Surprise! Even JournoListers hate Keith Olbermann
We on the right have long ago determined that the Keith Olbermann Show is about as entertaining as watching a special needs version of Barney. What is truly surprising is that the “sick puppies” on JournoList would agree.
The Daily Caller’s latest JournoList findings reveal that Keith Olbermann’s far left buddies find him to be “misogynistic”, “predictable” and “pompous”.
The Daily Caller: If you were one of the 400 members of the listserv Journolist, perhaps one of the most vicious insults you could hurl at a colleague is: You’re just like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity.
If the reader holds neutral — or even positive — views about the Fox News hosts, the insult may not sting. But in the cloistered world of liberal listserv enclaves, Hannityism is a cardinal sin. After all, Fox is a “dangerous,” “deranged” “cesspool” that, possibly, the FCC should be investigating.
The feelings against MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, then, must run deep.
“He’s become O’Reilly on the left– completely predictable, unfunny, and arrogant,” said Georgetown University Professor Michael Kazin in May 2009. “To my mind, what they do is no different form Hannity and O’Reilly,” said the New America Foundation’s Michael Cohen, “At least Hannity and O’Reilly engage with the other side (if mainly just to yell at them). Olbermann is just an echo chamber.” [...]
The Nation’s Katha Pollitt began the group’s rant. “He and Michael Musto did this whole long riff about beauty contestant Carrie ‘opposite marriage’ Prejean’s breast implants, stupidity, breast implants, tacky clothes, earrings, breast implants. They went on and on about how she was ‘part plastic’ and pathetic. You’d think they were celibate vegans who spent their lives zen meditating. It was just a whole TV humiliation of her, and it made me feel sorry for her, which wasn’t easy,” Pollitt said. [MORE]
I will never forget the first time I saw Keith Olbermann’s show. A dear liberal friend of mine was visiting and she insisted that we watch Olbermann instead of Bill O’Reilly. I had heard of Olbermann but never watched him before. For the next hour I sat in front of the television with my mouth agape wondering how in God’s name could my very smart and witty liberal friend regularly tune into this buffoon?
It will be interesting to see how the egomaniac Olbermann handles the news that this lefty peers think so lowly of him. Perhaps he may just take a permanent vacation.
For your entertainment, enjoy this clip of Glenn Beck mocking the oh-so pompous Keith Olbermann. If you know any J-Listers, invite them to view, they will probably get a kick out of it too.
Via: Memeorandum
Via: The Daily Caller
Via: NewsBusters
Video h/t: The Right Scoop
Sorry Charlie: House Panel finds Charlie Rangel broke ethics rules
Washington Post: A House ethics subcommittee announced Thursday that it found that Rep. Charles B. Rangelviolated congressional ethics rules and that it will prepare for a trial, probably beginning in September. The panel is expected to make the details of his alleged violations public next Thursday.
Rangel (D-N.Y.) has been under the House ethics committee's microscope since early 2008 after it was reported that he may have used his House position to benefit his financial interests. Two of the most serious inquiries have focused on Rangel's failure to declare $239,000 to $831,000 in assets on his disclosure forms, and on his effort to raise money for a private center named after him at City College of New York using his congressional letterhead.
In March, Rangel reluctantly stepped down as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee -- a week after the ethics panel ruled in a separate case that he had broken congressional gift rules by accepting trips to conferences in the Caribbean that were financed by corporate interests. The panel said that, at a minimum, Rangel's staff knew about the corporate backing for the 2007 and 2008 trips -- and that the congressman was therefore responsible.[...]
A judge-like panel will meet next Thursday and read the charges. That will happen just as the House is about to leave Washington for a 6 1/2 -week recess. The full trial is not likely to begin until the week of Sept. 13 -- right before Rangel faces what could be a difficult Sept. 14 primary challenge from New York State Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV. Powell is the son of the late congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (D-N.Y.), who faced his own ethics problems and was bested in 1970 by Rangel in a Democratic primary.
Talk about bad timing. Rangel and the Democrats brought this upon themselves. Rangel’s questionable dealings have been know for quite some time. Rather than to truly address the matter, Democrats arrogantly chose to ignore it. Now the matter is going to have to be dealt with just before midterm elections.
It will be interesting to see how Democrat’s dim 2010 prospects effect the outcome of Rangel. Given that Congress now has an approval rating of 11%, Democrats can go either way on whether Charlie stays or goes. They may dump him to try to improve their image a tiny bit or they may just say all hope is lost so why bother dumping Charlie.
Stay tuned.
Via: Memeorandum
Via: The Washington Post
Via: Gallup
"I think I'm in love 'cause I can't enough"
I don't feel like working really hard today. So. our retro-80s traditio for this Friday is Eddie Money's Think I'm in Love off his 1982 album Out of Control. Nothing really much to comment on, except to say how much I love my wife, who really doesn't like rock n' roll. Maybe it's the attraction of opposites.
The real question for Friday is how much of the current vampire craze can be traced back to Eddie Money? This is something that bears looking into. What else are we going to do while LiLo is in jail, except listen to Mel Gibson's rants over and over?
UPDATE: I almost forgot about this episode of King of Queens in which Doug and Deacon are trying to spend $5,000 in one day. Running out of ideas, they happen to meet Eddie Money at a restaurant and pay him to play Doug's living room, which he does for quite awhile, as their reaction shows:
Video: Alvin Greene’s campaign video
The New York Times: Alvin Greene, the Democratic candidate for Senate in South Carolina, who emerged at a public campaign event for the first time last weekend, is now out with his first campaign video. The video, called, “Alvin Green Is On the Scene,” is a 3-minute hip-hop mix, featuring extensive footage of LeBron James — perhaps an allusion to how Mr. Greene intends to make the Nov. 2 election a slam dunk.
With lyrics like this:
Well, Greene’s a new face in politics,
And he don’t show porno to college chicks.
But he’s got some ideas that’ll fix the state,
So open up your minds and stop the hate.
I am completely at a loss for words.
Via: Memeorandum
Via: The New York Times
JournoList strikes again: The smearing of Sarah Palin
This week the Daily Caller has been releasing email exchanges from the now defunct liberal listsev JournoList. We first learned about how lefty reporters, pundits and academics all conspired to play down the Reverend Wright story to help Obama get elected. Yesterday, the Daily Callers treated us to JournoListers conversations about the joy of watching Rush Limbaugh die, government regulating Fox News and the rapture they all had over Obama’s victory.
Today the Daily Caller shows us how the JournoListers conspired to create a coordinated attack on Sarah Palin after getting picked by John McCain.
The Daily Caller: In the hours after Sen. John McCain announced his choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate in the last presidential race, members of an online forum called Journolist struggled to make sense of the pick. Many of them were liberal reporters, and in some cases their comments reflected a journalist’s instinct to figure out the meaning of a story.
But in many other exchanges, the Journolisters clearly had another, more partisan goal in mind: to formulate the most effective talking points in order to defeat Palin and McCain and help elect Barack Obama president. The tone was more campaign headquarters than newsroom. […]
Daniel Levy of the Century Foundation noted that Obama’s “non-official campaign” would need to work hard to discredit Palin. “This seems to me like an occasion when the non-official campaign has a big role to play in defining Palin, shaping the terms of the conversation and saying things that the official [Obama] campaign shouldn’t say – very hard-hitting stuff, including some of the things that people have been noting here – scare people about having this woefully inexperienced, no foreign policy/national security/right-wing christia wing-nut a heartbeat away …… bang away at McCain’s age making this unusually significant …. I think people should be replicating some of the not-so-pleasant viral email campaigns that were used against [Obama].”
Ryan Donmoyer, a reporter for Bloomberg News who was covering the campaign, sent a quick thought that Palin’s choice not to have an abortion when she unexpectedly became pregnant at age 44 would likely boost her image because it was a heartwarming story.
“Her decision to keep the Down’s baby is going to be a hugely emotional story that appeals to a vast swath of America, I think,” Donmoyer wrote.
Politico reporter Ben Adler, now an editor at Newsweek, replied, “but doesn’t leaving sad baby without its mother while she campaigns weaken that family values argument? Or will everyone be too afraid to make that point?” [MORE]
It goes on from there. Now some people are defending the JournoListers by saying these are mostly opionators not true reporters. Thus sharing opinions is no biggie. Wrong. As lefty partisan hack Joe Klein shows these “shared opinions” become the talking points of the day.
Time’s Joe Klein then linked to his own piece, parts of which he acknowledged came from strategy sessions on Journolist. “Here’s my attempt to incorporate the accumulated wisdom of this august list-serve community,” he wrote. And indeed Klein’s article contained arguments developed by his fellow Journolisters. Klein praised Palin personally, calling her “fresh” and “delightful,” but questioned her “militant” ideology. He noted Palin had endorsed parts of Obama’s energy proposal.
This is how all these anti Palin themes get out into the public. Out of all the JournoList pieces, this story about trying to stop Palin will be the biggie. How do I know? Bbecause you had better believe Sarah Palin will be putting out a devastating Facebook note within the next 24 hours and the Palin Hating JournoLister won’t be able to ignore it.
It should be noted that a new JournoList 2.0 has sprung up albeit smaller than the original but nonetheless sinister. I have often said that, after the Tea Parties have successfully swept Democrats from power in 2010, they must turn their attention to the media before 2012. A good place to start is by memorizing the known list of JournoList members.
UPDATE: Palin responds
Do I know my Sarah Palin or do I know my Sarah Palin? Before I could even finish posting this post, Sarah Palin has responded.
The Daily Caller: “The lamestream media is no longer a cornerstone of democracy in America. They need help. They need to regain their credibility and some respect. There are some pretty sick puppies in the industry today. They really need help,” Palin said.
Palin said that behavior of the media, in betraying the tenets of journalism – also betrays her son’s decision to serve his country overseas and protect the rights of Americans.
“I have lost all respect for the ‘mainstream’ media because they lied; and still lie. And they abuse America’s freedom of the press — because with freedom comes responsibility. My son chose to put his life on the line to defend that freedom, and I feel like his, and every good soldier’s, efforts are thrown in their faces when the press takes advantage of their sacrifices instead of respecting the freedoms they’re willing to die for,” Palin said. [MORE]
The media jackals will pounce in 5, 4, 3, 2,1 …..
Via: Memeorandum
Via: The Daily Caller
Via: The Atlantic
Via: American Thinker
Via: The Daily Caller
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